Ok, so it;s been a little while since I last wrote. A lot has happened and changed that I don’t even know were to start. We are now in Cochabamba Bolivia. Cochabamba is not only an awesome name, it’s a beautiful city. We are living up on a small hill with a great view of the city below. Currently we are sleeping on tiled floors with our sleeping pads and sleeping bags. I’m realizing how spoiled I was to have a bed last month! This morning I got my first shower in four days, and let me tell you, it took me a good half hour to stir up the courage to get into the freezing water. But feeling clean feels awesome now!
We have an exciting month ahead of us. Our main ministry is visiting with 3 different orphanages. We will also be doing evangelism and VBS in different impoverished towns around the area,
Yesterday we did our first baby washing! It was soo neat. 50 or 60 some kids come to get their once a week washing. We met up with a number of missionary families around the area and went to work scrubbing the filth away from the smiling faces. My job was brushing and braiding – both of which I’m not very good at lol. It took me over ten minutes to get all my little girls knots out! Most of the children who come to the washing are forced, by their parents, to work in the city begging all week long, eating very little food. They are dirty and skinny because the impoverished look adds to their effectiveness in evoking sympathy from the passers by. It is so sad that children are being taken advantage of in this way. I was thankful to be able to lavish love on these children by the simple act of washing them and making the girls look all pretty with braids, hair ties, and painted nails.
Bolivia is a fun place and they love to party! Yesterday there was a hoppin party going on all day to celebrate the paving of our road! We also went to a youth group last night and it was a crazy fun time! They danced, sang, and had team competitions. Of course they made the gringo visitors go up front and look like goof balls dancing and singing! 🙂
Our travel here to Cochabamba was a crazy 5 days with 52 hours on buses (thankfully we had a few stops in between)! The scenery was beautiful. While driving through Peru we wound along precarious cliff edges high above crashing ocean waves below. Basically every corner had a cross and flowers marking the place where someone went over the edge! It was really sobering! It sure made me think of how short life is.
Whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appears for a Little time, and then vanishes away. James 4:14
One of our stops along the way was at Lake Titicaca. It was beautiful, and I got to take a boat tour out to the floating islands. It was really cool to see the lifestyle of the people who live out in the middle of the lake. They use reeds for everything, building houses, boats, islands, and eating!
Every 10-15 days they have to put a new layer of reeds down to keep their island afloat. And after 10 years they have to start all over on building a new island. Six or seven families live on each island. Currently there are 49 of them, but there could be 50 at any time because when the families can’t work out a problem between themselves they just cut the island in half and separate. They have three rules that they live by: Don’t steel, don’t lie, and don’t be lazy!
As much as I don’t like riding on a bus, it was neat to see all of Gods beautiful creation. I think Bolivia is the most beautiful country I’ve seen so far!
A bit more info from last month:
Thanks so much to many of you who entrusted me with some of your hard earned money. I want to let you know that I was able to donated $500 to the orphanage that we were working on back in Porvenir. They need to put the roof on the cafeteria yet before they can start moving kidos in.
